education of the negro, to become general and effective after the full
restoration of local government in the south, must be protected and
promoted as an integral part of the educational systems of the States.

I made it a special point in most of the conversations I had with southern
men to inquire into their views with regard to this subject. I found,
indeed, some gentlemen of thought and liberal ideas who readily
acknowledged the necessity of providing for the education of the colored
people, and who declared themselves willing to co-operate to that end to
the extent of their influence. Some planters thought of establishing
schools on their estates, and others would have been glad to see measures
taken to that effect by the people of the neighborhoods in which they
lived. But whenever I asked the question whether it might be hoped that
the legislatures of their States or their county authorities would make
provisions for negro education, I never received an affirmative, and only
in two or three instances feebly encouraging answers. At last I was forced
to the conclusion that, aside from a small number of honorable exceptions,
the popular prejudice is almost as bitterly set against the negro's having
the advantage of education as it was when the negro was a slave. There may
be an improvement in that respect, but it would prove only how universal
the prejudice was in former days. Hundreds of times I heard the old
assertion repeated, that "learning will spoil the nigger for work," and
that "negro education will be the ruin of the south." Another most
singular notion still holds a potent sway over the minds of the masses--it
is, that the elevation of the blacks will be the degradation of the
whites. They do not understand yet that the continual contact with an
ignorant and degraded population must necessarily lower the mental and
moral tone of the other classes of society. This they might have learned
from actual experience, as we in the north have been taught, also by
actual experience, that the education of the lower orders is the only